I never thought I would be saying this but poor Millcent :( She deserves to be happy, anyway good job and yes Pansy's taste in makeup is a bit...extravegant xD my favorite line was:
"However, I supposed it might be a good idea to help Pansy apply her own makeup, just so Draco wouldn’t run screaming at the first sight of her."

good job!

Author's Response: Thanks for the review! I'm always so happy to get reviews on this story. I'm glad the fic made you sympathize with Millicent and that you enjoyed the humorous aspects as well. :)

Hello! Well I was browsing the forums, particularly the challenges, and somehow I led myself toyour writing account. Please excuse the incorrect spacing and grammar (my keyboard is being a pain in the rear, and I have to resort to pasting spaces.) Hahaha, I bet you dont want to hear about how I came to read your story, huh? I shall just skip to the review :)

I have always been a het shipper: Ive read and wrote about only heterosexual characters; this was my first read at slash. Now let me tell you, even though I am straight, Im a huge supporter of gay rights and marriage. In America, or at least where I am from, gay people are frowned upon and I think they deserve just the same as we do, they arent different from us is what Im saying :D. This piece really touched me as a reader, and you wrote this magnificently.

I liked how you defined Millicent Bullstrodes sexual orientation as different than most of the other pureblood girls. She isnt heard much throughout the series, and I truly love reading stories where we can see those who are not in the spotlight. You showed a different and better side of Millicent, and I liked that.

Your writing style is simply beautiful, and I admire you especially for not only taking on a rare character, but putting in a theme that is common in everyday life, but so seldomly welcomed in media. Each emotion Millicent felt, I felt it too: this was just powerfully written. It was perfect. The most touching moment for me though would have to be the end there. I could symphathize what she has to go through, especially when you go into how she would be disowned and turned away if she did come out.

I truly enjoyed reading this, and I am saving this into my favorites. You write very original pieces :)

9/10 stars

XxVampireXx

Author's Response: Wow, thanks so much for the amazingly detailed review! Anyway I totally understand where you're coming from - aside from writing this fic I am not much of a slash reader, but as a supporter of gay rights I wanted to write something that would inspire sympathy for what some homosexual people have to go through, and I'm glad you thought it worked. I'm straight as well, but I have quite a few gay/lesbian friends, so I really have to give all the credit to them for inspiring me to write this.Millicent was actually a really easy character to write - because we know next to nothing about her it's easy to make her a believable lesbian. I think the reason a lot of people don't like slash fanfics is because many slash writers tend to choose characters that are very very straight in canon. It's much harder to write a good story about Harry being gay than about, say, Regulus Black being gay. I guess what I'm trying to say is I probably don't deserve so much credit for writing about an obscure character, but I'm glad you enjoyed it anyway. Thanks so much for the great review!

I just finished your Birtwhistle fic... then I found this. I can't help but read it. I can not abide intolerance to LGBT individuals. It sickens me. So, I think I'm going to read this... and hope that Millicent comes in to her own without anything too harmful occurring.

Hm, poor Millicent. I can only imagine how much homosexuality would be looked down on in the pure blood society. :`-[

Great one shot. I was hoping for a happy ending, but I believe the way you ended it was appropriate. 10/10

Author's Response: Thanks so much for reading and reviewing this. I'm glad you enjoyed it somewhat, and sorry to disappoint you with the ending. I would've liked Millicent to be happy too, but more than that I wanted to be realistic, and show that for so many people, there never is a happy ending due to this kind of prejudice. =( Thanks again for the review!

Aww that was such a good original story! I love how you acknowledge a real life issue in many girls. Although I can in no way relate to Millicent I do feel strongly for her situation amoung many others who feel this way in the world and cannot bring it into the public for fear of persecution and ridicule. I though it was a lovley story and you did a great job with it seeing as this story could have went wrong in many ways you kept it beautifully intact. well done!

Author's Response: Thanks so much for your heartfelt comments. I'm really glad you thought I handled the matter well. =)

I'm glad you wrote this, because a lot of authors (even though I love slash) seem to just write the slash fic and then not deal with the characters reactions that they may be homosexual. Being hetrosexual, I probably don't really understand, but I guess it must be hard to come out in out anti-gay community. My friends are very open-minded and stuff but they use gay to mean bad (that movie was so gay). My parents have friends that are lesbians, but when they moved to a small town they had to pretend to be just friends to avoid gay bashing. :(

Pansy's bad taste in make up made me laugh, as did this line: I couldn’t bring myself to voice the word “neon.

I also liked this part: If he liked little Mudblood twits like her, what did I care? I think its good that you made Millicent call Hermione a mudblood, that despite being gay she didn't give up the prejudices (sp?) that her family and school house hold.

It's ironic however that you made Hannah the person that Millicent liked, as in the fic I'm writing she becomes gay herself. Perhaps theres hope for Millicent yet. :)

You made me like and feel sorry for a character that I don't normally like. It takes a lot for me to do that (I'm rather preset in my ways).

I hope I didn't bore you to tears with this very long review (the longest I've ever left) and I'd just like to add that I love your pen name.

:)

Author's Response: Thanks so much for the awesome review, and sorry it took me so long to respond. I'm glad my fic made you like and symphasize with Millicent, and that you found her story realistic. Sadly there are a lot of communities in the US where homosexuals are discriminated against, and I wanted to write this to bring awareness and sympathy to their situation. anyway thanks again for the great review. I'll have to check out your Hannah fic sometime!

Wow, this one is really powerful! I would have read it ages ago but I thought it was a chaptered fic for some reason and I never had the time to tackle it. It's really good, and from someone with mostly LGBT friends, I found it very accurate. Comparing the conservative views of Christians to that of Purebloods worked well, and the way Millicent's mother was going to give her the duty talk hinted that she had her suspicions about her little girl, which I found very true to life. Most of my friends' parents knew before they came out. The point you made about the difficulty in merely finding someone else willing to admit their homosexuality is a good one- it really shows how much harder it is for her. Millicent is such a great character, and I like the understated way with which you tackled the story. Pansy and Goyle are hilarious! I felt as if I was sitting alongside them all at the Slytherin table. This story is yet another reason why you're on my favorite authors list! Brilliant work, as always.

Author's Response: Thanks so much for the wonderful review, and sorry it's taken me forever to respond. Your compliments on this fic mean a lot, especially since I know you've got a number of friends who have probably experienced something similar. So I'm glad you thought it was realistic. I'm glad you liked the choice of characters too. Thanks again for reviewing!

Excellent story! It would be very interesting to read more about the conflicts and life of a homosexual woman. Usually when homosexuality mentioned, people think of men, gay men and only rarely about lesbians. I had such friends myself and I have to say that it's a very complex situation. I found that the society of lesbians (if I may call it that) has built up a very similar structure to the "normal" society. I mean that in order to restore balance they separated to "guys" and "girls". These "guys" sometimes seemed more guys than real men, still inside with the problems and sensitivity of a woman. Very interesting situation. I wonder if their "boy or girl attitude" depends on their personality or the behaviour or strenght of orientation of their partner.

You touched the topic very sensitively, I liked it, as well as your good sense of humour. I appreciate humour very much!

Author's Response: Wow, thanks so much for the amazing review! I'm especially glad you chose to read this story, as it's one of my favorites. Everything you've mentioned is very true, especially about how the issue of gay men is given a lot more thought and attention than that of gay women. It's one of the main reasons I wanted to write this story about Millicent, and I'm glad you thought I handled it well. I'm happy that you liked the humor, too - I seem to have trouble keeping it out of things. Thanks so much for the review! =)

You made me feel sorry for Millicent! You have a nack for turning characters that are generally disliked and turning them into something real and likeable. You have serious amounts of talent! Huge hug to your friend as well- I can't imagine ever going through something like that!

Author's Response: Thanks so much for the review! I'm glad you liked this story, and that it changed your opinion about Millicent a little. It's so easy to dislike the characters that Harry dislikes, but really, they're people too. I'm glad that came across. =)

This is so sad and it really made the point hit home, that having to pretend to be something you are not is a most awful, awful thing. I really like the way the make up session mirrors the subject matter. She is literally camouflaging herself for the ball, but also in her life - its excellent imagery. The ending is also ever so sad but you really do pull the reader in and make them feel what she is feeling. Excellent stuff.

Author's Response: Thanks so much for the wonderful review, Lucid. I'm so glad you noticed the parallels between Millicent's makeup and her feelings - you're actually the only one to comment on that out of the many people who reviewed this. So thank you!

This was very refreshing to read. I have looked at your profile, and saw that you write about different characters in the Harry Potter series quite a bit, and I am pleased to see that. You did a wonderful job this one shot. This wasn't unrealstic at all, and it shed a lot of light on the difficulties of living up to what a pure blood is supposed to become in the eyes of others, and that certain sacrifices have to be made in such cases. Very nice job and I am certainly read more of your works.

Author's Response: Thanks for the review! I do find minor characters alot more interesting to write about - there's much more room to be creative. I hope you enjoy my other stories as much as this oe! =)

It is nice to read something about homosexuality that is not portrayed as trashy. And it is nice that for one someone is unsure of how they feel, this was very realisitc. Although I'm not gay myself, I go to a girls school and I do know a few gay people - how Millicent is feeling is much more what it's really like. :) I liked! Well Done!

I have never read a story like this, and would never have thought it up in a million years, but I htink you wrote it beautifully. The ideas behind it shine through wonderfully, and it's really a credit to your writing abilities.For the first time, I actually have nothing to criticise, I couldn't even find any grammatical mistakes. I'm going to be looking extra intently at your other fics now of course :P, but this one really is brilliant. Your characterisation of everyone is great, and your descriptions are faultless.Even though this piece was about Millicent, I absolutely adored the way you portrayed Pansy in this. The part when they were getting ready was just genius, and I loved this line I couldn’t bring myself to voice the word “neon.” I could easily imagine this was how Pansy did indeed get ready for the Yule Ball, and you write her character closer to canon than i think in any other story I've read featuring her, whether as a minor character or major. She is a character I find difficult to knwo myself, but I utterly believed this was Rowling's Pansy that you've brought into your own story. Truly, a wonderful feat.Millicent is obviously a minor character of which we know little, and I love the way you've developed her here. It would never have occurred to me to think of the problems she faces as a homosexual in Slytherin, and I htink you deal with a quite tense and sensitive issue gracefully. I really like how you write her, and the personality you gave her. The neon line (as it is inexorably called in my mind :D) is an excellent example of the light humour you have given her, a slight sarcastic edge that makes her seem all the more real to me. You really drew me into this piece, and I completely felt for Millicent's problems and inescapable trap that was laid for her. A terrible position for anyone to find themselves in, and it saddens me that it had to end the way it did. Of cours,e it didn't make me like this any less, though I wish there could have been a more hopeful/happier ending (I'm a complete sap for a happy ending :D). But you keep the tone real throughout, and really I don't think it could have ended any other way. A magnificent piece of writing :)

Author's Response: Wow, thanks for the amazing review! And don't worry, your comments are still helpful, especially the ones about Pansy - I was worried I might be overdoing her love of makeup, lol, but it did add some much-needed humor to the piece. I'm also glad you liked my portrayal of Millicent - I felt I had a lot of room to be creative with her character. As for the ending, alot have people have said they wanted a happy one, but this one seemed to get the point across better. Thanks again for the wonderful review!

This was very good! Millicent was an interesting character to read, and I'm very glad that I read this. It's very well-written, and I really liked how you had her not wanting to admit that she was homosexual --- poor thing. One of my friends admitted to me that she was homosexual, and she was afraid of the same thing that Millicent is going through. This line made me chuckle for some reason. My first kiss, stolen by a – a – a – a man.

Author's Response: Thanks so much for the review! This story was inspired by talking to one of my friends, who is homosexual, so I'm glad you thought it was realistic.

Wow, this is really quite origional! It was certainly an interesting portrayal of Millicent, whom we don't know much about, and by the end I felt more than a little sorry for her. I think you managed to turn her into a real person, which must have been quite a difficult feat. She does seem different from the impression I gained of her from the books, but I like her more this way. I also like your portrayal of Pansy who seemed very true to form. Your fic was moving, but also funny in places e.g. ('Those shoes are adorable' - lol!) -- over-all, a good job!

Author's Response: Thanks so much for the review! I'm glad you enjoyed this story! I chose Millicent precisely because no one knows much about her, so there was alot more room to be creative. So I'm glad you liked my version of her. =)

Definetly different, and not in a bad way. The actions of the characters as they got ready was great…very detailed and nicely nicely done. I loved the ‘stolen kiss’ line. It took me off guard but felt perfect as you wrote it, if that makes any sense. Anyways, nicely done. I enjoyed the banter and inner thoughts and again, the detail you gave was a nice refreshing change from most fanfics.

Author's Response: Thanks so much for the review, timeturner! I'm glad you likeds the details - I was worried it might be a little too much.

I really liked this, especially the part where she is upset about a man stealing her first kiss. I think you should take out one of the "a"s there because it's just a little too much. This was full of emotion and very believable, especially since we don't know much about Millicent. Bravo!

Author's Response: Thanks for the review! I'm so glad you liked the storyline, and my choice of character. I'll be sure to go back and check for those "a's" you mentioned, once we can edit stories again. =)